'V^e.NT 







^o. *.. 



^^ 


















^V ^^-^.^^ 



>* 




.0' 



.V 




_ _ -/• /\ -IK-" *^^'^-^- '^^" /\ 





wri^ o ^^V^^ 












».o>* ^^^ 




















.4 o^ > <^l» 







Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
in 2010 with funding from 
Tine Library of Congress 



http://www.arcliive.org/details/cliargesagainstdOObuln 



Charges Against 

the 

Diaz Administration 



By FRANCISCO BULNES 




Froir the book 

"THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT MEXICO" 



< 



v> 







K 



.-5^^ 



First: — Having sold half of Lower California for a mere 
pittance to Mr, Louis Huller, of German extraction and a nat- 
uralized American citizen, who passed it on to an American 
colonizing enterprise. "El Nacional," a newspaper with a 
wide circulation, started the campaign, causing great alarm. 
It held that Lower California would follow the fate of Texas 
from the moment that the same methods of turpitude and 
treason were employed against the Mexican people. 

Second: — The Government was accused of having given 
its consent to changes affected in the Mining Code, including 
the clause which assigns to the owner of the land the coal de- 
posits that may be found upon it, for no other reason than 
that of enriching the grantees of unclaimed lands in the state 
of Coahuila, who had acquired the Sabina lands for an in- 
significant sum with a view to selling them to the American 
multi-millionaire, Huntington. 

r/zzrd:— Having sold, for next to nothing, 3,000,000 hect- 
ares of excellent lands in the State of Chihuahua to two fav- 
orites of the Mexican Government, that they might resell to 
Mr. Hearst, the well known celebrated millionaire, who con- 
stantly conspired against the integrity of Mexican territory 
so as to bring about armed intervention. 

Fourth: — Granting concessions to foreign companies to 
exploit the oil lands, among which companies the American 
predominated; granting them also exemption from export 
duties on the crude or refined product, thereby depriving the 
Mexican people of the only means at their command to de- 
rive anything from the exploitation of their great national 
wealth. 

Fifth: — Notwithstanding the fact that the most scandal- 
ous of all the oil concessions was that granted by the dictator- 
ship to Lord Cowdray (consequently in favor of English 
capital) it was well received by the patriots, until the press 
began agitating the matter, saying that Lord Cowdray was 
intimately associated with ex-President Taft's Administra- 
tion, as his brother, Henry W. Taft, and George W. Wick- 
ersham. Attorney General in the Taft Cabinet, were directors 
in the company organized and presided over by Lord Cow- 
dray. 

3 



Sixth :i— Maying permitted the Guggenheiltts to monopol- 
ize almost completely the important metallurgic industry 
upon which the progress of mining in the country depended. 
The Giiggenheims controlled the smelting plants of Monter- 
rey, San Luis Potosi, Aguascalientes, and Velardena in Du- 
i-ango, and were trying to get a foothold in Pachuca and Real 
del Monte, thereby forcing the retirement of all the com- 
panies that had sunk a great amount of capital in smelters 
and mining ventures. 

Seventh : — The granting to Colonel Greene, an American 
citizen, of enormous concessions in the copper lands of the 
State of Sonora, upon which he had established the famous 
Cananea Plant, where the four thousand employees were 
treated like slaves, and with such inhumanity that there was 
an uprising among them, with the result that armed men 
from the United States passed into Mexican territory to pro- 
tect the American oppressors. The national press stigma- 
tized Governor Izabal of Sonora as a traitor to his country 
for not having ejected the insolent intruders by force of 
arms. 

Eighth : — Having permitted the United States Ambassa- 
dor, Mr. Thompson, to enter the business field in Mexico, 
something that would not have been tolerated in any other 
country, and having granted him personal concessions by 
means of which he organized The United States Banking 
Company and the Pan-American Railroad. 

Ninth: — The permission given by General Diaz to the 
United States Ambassador, Mr. Powell Clayton, to appear 
every afternoon at the National Palace with a list of recom- 
mendations for private American affairs, in order that they 
might be approved immediately by the administrative and 
judicial authorities in favor of the interested parties, even 
when the requests constituted an infamous injustice to the 
rights of the Mexican people. 

Tenth: — The arrangement by the law office of the noted 
Cientifico, Sr. Joaquin Casasus, of the scandalous conces- 
sions in the rubber lands granted to the American multi-mil- 
lionaires John Rockefeller and Nelson Aldrich, which 
caused the ruin of a great number of poor towns in the State 
of Durango. 

4 



Eleventh: — The verbal arrangement between Senor 
Limantour, the leader of the Cientificos, and Mr. Mallet-Pre- 
vost, lawyer of the Tlahualilo Company, of an agreement 
which ruined the river-bank-dwellers, both great and small, 
of the Nazas River in the cotton region of the "Laguna," who 
were for the most part Mexicans; and moreover, the grant. of 
several millions indemnity to the Tlahualilo Company for 
damages caused by it to the river-bank-dwellers of the Nazas 
through a colonization contract which had lapsed under the 
provision of the law, because of non-fulfillment, and which 
was null, besides, because it was unconstitutional, as Senor 
Limantour had acted without the necessary faculties, because 
it did not come within the province of the Treasury Depart- 
ment to settle matters of this nature. The American Ambas- 
sador, Mr. Henry Lane Wilson, was the chief protector of the 
Tlahualila enterprise to exploit Mexico, and went so far as to 
make the absurd statement that when there was even a single 
American stockholder in a stock company, organized with 
stocks to the bearer, incorporated under Mexican laws, even 
if his share were only one cent, it gave the United States Gov- 
ernment the right to make a claim against the Mexican gov- 
ernment under the title of rights of aliens. 

Even after the Secretary of Fomento, Senor Olegario 
Molina, disavowed the Limantour-Mallet-Prevost agreement, 
the inhabitants of the "Laguna" region, when they became 
aware that the Cientificos protected the enterprises that were 
working their ruin in order to please the United States Am- 
bassador, assumed a revolutionary attitude, breathing hate 
against the Cientificos and all foreigners who sought to steal 
their water and lands — a hatred that later vented itself in 
the assassination of three hundred Chinamen and several 
Spaniards in Torreon, with the expulsion of the latter and the 
confiscation of their property. 

Twelfth: — Having sold for an almost nominal sum, 50,- 
000,000 hectares of marvellously fertile lands to twenty-eight 
favorites, who made poor bargains with the foreign com- 
panies to whom they sold then , mostly Americans, as it was 
the latter's ambition to buy up the country by bits and finally 
realize the boasted pacific conquest. 



Thirteenth : — Having despoiled the Yaquis, brave and in- 
domitable as the Araucanians, of their magnificent lands to 
hand them over to thieving bureaucrats, who wanted them 
merely to sell to American investors. 

The spoliation of the Yaquis brought upon Mexico a 
bloody struggle of twenty years, which has served at tlie 
same time as a school of depravity for the Federal judges, 
the majority of whom dragged it out indefinitely in order to 
benefit pecuniarily by the frauds. 

Fourteenth : — Having despoiled various towns in the 
State of Mexico of their magnificent wooded hills in order to 
favor an American and Senor Jose Sanchez Ramos, a Spani- 
ard, proprietors of the paper factories of San Rafael and An- 
exas. Further, favor was shown these two favorites of the 
dictator, by allowing them to fix the rate of tariff at both the 
maritime and frontier custom houses so as totally to exclude 
paper for newspapers, and in great part, all other paper from 
the national market. 

Fifteenth: — Having conceived the gigantic operation 
that gave the Mexican Government control of the great rail- 
road system, with no purpose in view other than that of per- 
mitting the banking house of Scherer-Limantour, in combin- 
ation with American railroad magnates, to buy secretly and 
at a low figure the stocks of the Mexican Central, the Nation- 
al, the International, the Pan-American, and other railroads 
to sell them later at a great advance to the Mexican govern- 
ment, thus consummating a piratical financial stroke against 
Mexico and the holders of the Mexican railroad stocks. 

Sixteenth : — Consenting, after the Mexican Govern- 
ment had obtained control of the American branches and 
fused all into one great company called Lineas Nacionales, 
to the appointment by Senor Limantour of an American, 
Mr. Rrown, to the important post of General Manager, and 
to the assignment of all the important posts, especially 
those drawing large salaries, to Americans. The revolution- 
ary press proclaimed as one of the greatest principles of 
popular restitution the "Moicanization" of the railroads, 
which meant expulsion of all non-Mexican ofiicials and 

employees. 

i 

6 



Seventeenth: — The unceasing efforts of Senor Liman- 
tour, finally crowned with success, to place the oldest min- 
ing company, the Compania de Minas de Pachuca and Real 
del Monte, in the hands of an American company, organ- 
ized in Boston, and to having followed the same course 
with the "Santa Gertrudis" concern. Although both com- 
panies were obliged to keep the native working-men, they 
could dismiss all the Mexican employees, especially the 
high-salaried ones. 

A storm of indignation broke loose in the Mexican 
mining world against the Cientificos for having consented, 
for the sake of brokerage fees and enormous gratuities, to 
drain the nation of its capital by making it over to out- 
siders. ' 

Eighteenth : — The grant by Senor Limantour of a mon- 
opoly to the house of Mosler, Bowen & Cook, to supply all 
office furniture to Government offices, as well as to Gov- 
ernment schools, and to supply permanently all desk re- 
quisites for Government offices. 

Nineteenth: — The abandonment by Senor Limantour 
of his patriotic resolution not to place any of the foreign 
loans with New York banks, as he had given these banks 
a share in the conversion of the loans of 1899, and had 
placed the entire loan of 1904, amounting to $40,000,000, 
with the New York house of J. Pierpont Morgan. 

Twentieth: — The complete prostitution of the judicial 
system, which dictated that in case a foreigner was in liti- 
gation with a Mexican, the case had to be decided in favor 
of the foreigner, whether he were right or wrong, without 
making the Mexican pay the costs; but if the foreigner 
were an American, his Mexican opponent was obliged to 
pay the costs of the suit. 

Twenty-first — Having been guilty of the servile and 
traitorous act of lending Magdalena Bay to the United 
States. 

Twenty-second: — Having shown great vacillation about 
fortifying the ports on the Tehuantepec Railroad. 



Twenty-third '.^-Kaving rejected, in order not to dis- 
please the United States, the honorable propositions of em- 
inently respectable Japanese houses to establish Japanese 
colonies in various parts of the country, particularly on the 
Pacific Coast and in Lower California. 

Twenty-fourth: — Having neglected, with culpable weak- 
ness, to pursue the Chamizal question to the end, which 
would have put the Mexican people in possession of the ter- 
ritoiy upon which the citj^ of El Paso is built, stolen from 
tiiem by the Yankees. 

Twenty-fifth : — Having passed an immigration law in 
1908 against the Japanese and Chinese, dictated by the United 
States State Department, whose chief object was to prevent 
the Chinese from getting into the United States across the ex- 
tensive Mexican frontier. 

Twenty-sixth: — Having followed so degrading a policy 
toward the United States that any American, however insig- 
nificant or knavish he might be, felt privileged to repeat with 
haughtiness Saint Paul's famous words when sentence was 
passed upon him : "Civis romanus sum..' 



; 04 '^' 












A 
















A ^ 









» «/ >>J -^.^ 




^^-^^^ 













o 




• 


"^o 


:^ 








" 






-}^ 



■ay <i- » ^^^ * v- ■<? -^*Wi^^^ -CL 





